


ten feet under and upside down

by Lire_Casander



Category: Roswell New Mexico (TV 2019)
Genre: Angst, Anxiety, M/M, Non-Graphic Violence, Panic Attacks
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-21
Updated: 2019-04-21
Packaged: 2020-01-23 09:55:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,046
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18547411
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lire_Casander/pseuds/Lire_Casander
Summary: “We do run hot,” he spits, blood tasting like copper in his mouth. “But we burn just the same.”





	ten feet under and upside down

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Shenanigans](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Shenanigans/gifts).



> Title and excerpts taken from _Storm_ by Lifehouse. I own nothing – characters and lyrics are their owners’.
> 
> Beta'ed by the amazing [estel_willow](https://archiveofourown.org/users/estel_willow). All remaining mistakes are my own.
> 
> Meagn, I really really hope you enjoy this little piece of angsty fic.

**overwhelmed by the ocean's shapeless form**

He’s chosen to ride in the open back of the Humvee, curls wildly flying around his head as he takes in the air cooling under the upcoming storm. His mind is running a thousand miles per second, heart beating hard against his ribcage, as if ready to take that leap and crawl outside, to stay with the remnants of what once was his race, his roots – his family.

He can’t undo what he’s already done, and isn’t that the funniest fact of them all? The first time he takes a life – the very first time he is faced with the choice of fight or flight – it has to be his own mother’s. It has to be a genocide.

This is what Jesse Manes has turned him into – a shell of an alien impersonating a human being who has spent most of his life searching for answers above when they were all next to him, but he has been so blinded by developing feelings so _human_ he might cry just from thinking about them, he’s been sidetracked when he could have had more than just mere seconds with _her_.

That last moment will forever be etched in his memory. The way he could feel her, the overwhelming catch on being so deeply, utterly _cherished_ he had wanted to bolt and to hang on at the same time.

Alex Manes elicits that very same reaction in him every time they share as much as a wisp of air.

He closes his eyes, face still up towards the blackening sky. Alex said so many things in that holding area – things he knows Alex doesn’t mean because he doesn’t deserve Alex risking his own life. Alex, who is known for leaving the pieces of his broken heart in the open for scavengers to pick on it. Alex, who ran down those stairs, crying out nonsense about family and love, and he just couldn’t allow that.

Because _I don’t look away_ has a meaning he doesn’t want to hold on to –every bit of _I love you_ he can’t afford, not when he has found purpose in his life – not when he has to save his mother.

Not when a glass wall is the only thing between his dream and his reality.

And yet Alex has stayed through all the spiteful hatred he could fake, seeing right through his lies and calling him on them – holding him while he cried, after _feeling_ his mother for the first time. 

The connection was immediate, a rush of suddenness and a pang of emotion. He could see her younger self, bright big eyes and wide smile. He _heard_ her voice in his head.

The permission to run away – to keep being _alive_.

It will be haunting him for the rest of his days, whether on this planet or another.

He can feel the breeze wiping away his tears, and his heart soars with it, looking for the place where his mother now looks after him.

 **water's getting harder to tread**

The Humvee pulls to halt so abruptly he almost crashes against the glass separating the back from the cabin. He’s spent the last half hour drifting between awareness and daze, thoughts plaguing his dizzy mind like nightmares – only this time the truth of what he’s done falls crashing down on him like a freight train whenever he opens his eyes to stare at the emptiness of clouds gathering for the storm.

The images will plague his nightmares for eons. 

“We’ve arrived,” he hears Alex through the glass, voice muffled. Valenti shakes his head next to him. 

“I don't really think it’s a good idea to leave him here on his own. Not after today, anyway.”

But Michael is already sauntering out of the vehicle, dusting off his worn jeans to distract himself from the vivid memories. “I’ll be fine,” he grits out when he surrounds the car from the back to the driver’s window. “You should head home. The storm’s brewing.”

Not waiting for an answer, he walks towards the mines, stepping in synch with his breathing to steady himself. He’s almost at the entrance when the engine turns on and the car tires stretch on the dirt, away from the madness of the day. 

Away from him.

He expects to see Max with his books and a fort made of lawn chairs and air heaters, Noah waiting for them to make a decision that will bring him back to life on into a painful death. He just needs to convince Max and Isobel that the broken alien in a pod in the turquoise mines is their only chance now to know – because Michael himself has blown up an entire military facility where their family was kept in captivity, with them still inside.

It doesn’t matter that there was no real chance for him to save them – he’s still the one who set off the alarm by trying to free the only being to have ever loved him as unconditionally as a mother should.

He is still responsible for _genocide_. 

Now, they are the only survivors of a seventy-year-old crash in the middle of nowhere, and he will be damned if he lets his siblings bring Noah to death with their bystander attitude. He needs answers, and after he’s got them, he will be the one to put Noah to rot in the middle of a fucking desert for what he’s done to Isobel.

When he approaches the pods he notices that the three of them are empty. There’s no one around taking watch, and there are signs of a fight. Rage courses through his veins when he realizes Max and Isobel might have set him free from his stasis without bothering to tell him. 

He kicks the floor, dust flying everywhere as the pods begin to shuffle under the strength of his outburst.

He knows exactly where to find Noah – and he will fight _anyone_ to get his answers before he makes Noah leave this planet with the indignity he deserves.

 **how long have i been in this storm**

He’s facing the barrel of Max’s gun, a situation he never thought he would be in. He would have expected fists and anger, but never his brother aiming his service arm at him. 

After the day he has endured, he doesn’t know what to expect as _normal_ anymore. 

“I am getting out of here with answers,” he says in an even voice that doesn’t feel his at all. “Noah can give them to me, and I’m not letting another alien to die. Not today.”

“Another alien?” Max looks confused. “What are you talking about, Michael?”

He inhales deeply. He could easily disarm his brother without even touching the gun, but the thrill of uncertain danger is a bigger pull in his wrecked soul. 

“I’ve-I saw her today, Max,” he whispers, voice wavering even if he wills it to remain steady. “I don’t want to lose any more family today.”

He can tell the moment realization dawns on Max, and how he wars between his desire of asking and his need of remaining in the dark. 

“You are not losing us,” Max settles for saying. “Isobel and I, and Liz, and Alex. We’re not going anywhere.”

He huffs. “Believe me, I do know Alex doesn’t want to go anywhere,” he says viciously, the memory of a man standing his ground and willingly accepting a fate that wasn't only his still fresh in his mind. 

“What the hell?” he hears coming from behind Max’s back. “What are you doing, Max? Lower the damned gun!”

Isobel and Liz have appeared out of nowhere, thunder roaring as the background soundtrack of their entrance. Michael grips the vial harder, suddenly aware that he is outnumbered. 

“Where have you been all day?” Isobel asks. “I’ve been trying to reach you. And we come here to see Noah gone, and you’re here with,” she trails off when she sees the antidote in his hand. “What are you trying to do?”

He gets distracted by the concern in his sister’s eyes, the primal fear she is projecting. He doesn’t see Max lowering the gun, and he also doesn’t see him charging against his own brother, hitting him a square in the chest, sending them both to the ground. They knock head against mouth. 

Liz takes advantage of the situation to snatch the vial from his fingers, tucking it away. Max is keeping him pinned to the ground, and Isobel is just hovering over them. 

“Michael?” she whispers, as if asking for permission. He knows what she’s asking for, and he doesn’t care anymore. He feels the pull of another mind in his, and just falls into the swirling colors. 

He shows her everything he’s gone through, but she only gasps forcibly when she witnesses the flames, the explosion, the utter love and fear in Alex's face, his mother allowing him to live. 

“We do run hot,” he spits, blood tasting like copper in his mouth. “But we burn just the same.”

 **if i could just see you**

Isobel drops onto Max’s couch, exhausted from the effort and the revelations. “Let him go,” she says, voice not quavering a bit. “He won't try to do anything, right, Michael?”

He is devoid of energy as Max lifts his weight and sets him free. 

“What did you see?” he distantly hears Max asking Isobel, but he is too detached from everything to even care. 

He just wants the world to end – with a bang, preferably. 

“There were more,” Isobel exhales. “Max, there were more like us, like Noah. We weren't alone.”

“I don't know what freaky show Michael showed you in his head, but I thought we had established we were the only ones surviving the crash, along with Noah and the woman in the reserve.”

He’s lying on his back on the floor, trying to focus on getting his breathing under control so he can escape into the bedroom and knock some truths out of Noah before it is too late. But he isn’t able to move yet, and the conversation seems to be closing in on him. 

“I’ve seen _her_ , Max. I felt them _all_ ,” Isobel’s short of breath but she’s still talking. “She was her mother. Michael's mother was somewhere on Earth, and we didn't know. We didn't search for anyone else. And they're just _gone_.” The agony is oozing in waves off her, the same agony he’s been feeling ever since he’s had to choose at the prison – picking between one family member or another has been dreadful enough to last him a lifetime. 

He manages to sit up somehow, pain jolting through his ribs where Max landed, effectively stopping him in his quest for answers. “Iz,” he mutters, rubbing at his chest. “Leave it alone. Please.”

“But you were in so much pain!” she screeches. “You _still_ are!”

“Just let me be,” he pleads, attempting to stand up and failing miserably. His legs won’t cooperate, and he is feeling weaker by the second.

“C’mon, Michael,” Max intervenes, reaching out and helping him straighten up. “I pushed you kinda hard to the ground. Let me heal you.”

“No!” he screams, startling them all. “I don’t want healing! I need the reminder of what has happened!”

If Max looks slightly taken aback by the force of his words – a reprise of what he said not so long ago in a bunker not far from here – it’s washed away by the loud _thud_ they hear coming from the bedroom. Liz jumps inside with a swift movement, and in less than a minute she is back outside with them. “Noah’s gone,” she sentences, and he feels like the air has been sucked straight from his lungs. Isobel lifts a hand to her heart, Max stands up to hold her.

No more answers. No one left to ask. He’s effectively alone in this planet, heartbroken and defeated. He doesn’t dare look up at his siblings – he doesn’t want the pity in Max’s eyes or the devastation in Isobel’s.

**this darkness would turn to light**

Liz comes to sit besides him, the antidote still gripped tight in her right hand. “I’m sorry for your loss,” she says out loud, and he’s sure each of them feels it deep in their own bones, for reasons completely different yet similarly crushing. “But I think I have an idea.”

He does not want to know about anything they come up with, not when his only chance at _knowing_ has just gone to die a painful death in Max’s bedroom. He has lost so much today in his ordeal to get the answers he needed – he can’t bear being offered a solution that might destroy him.

He feels numb. He’s drowning any sound around him as he gives himself time to process that he will never get to know what really happened, who they really are, why they were spared – safely tucked away in a cave to hatch fifty years after the crash while the rest of their race was dissected and experimented upon so close to Roswell that they should have been able to _feel_ them.

“It’s a good idea,” Isobel is saying when he comes back to them, tears already threatening to roll down his face, and he can’t afford any of them to see him at his lowest – even if Max has had to take him to the drunk tank far more times than he cares to admit, or Isobel has had to pick up the pieces every time he broke down thinking about everything he thought he had lost.

Only Alex has seen him at his barest, and it earned him a broken hand, a destroyed heart. No one gets to ever hurt him that way, ever again. 

“Michael, what do you think?” Isobel’s asking him gently. When he looks up he notices that she’s moved from the couch to stand right in front of him, no traces of mourning in her eyes. 

“What do I think about what?”

“Were you even listening?” Max grumbles. Liz shoots him a glance that speaks of daggers, if Michael is understanding it right. “It seems the antidote helps us reach for memories we might have suppressed. Liz thinks that, since you’re the one who actually got to interact with,” he trails off for a second, “with your mother, you might be able to unleash the memories you might have from before the crash. It might work.”

Those words spark fuel for a fire which, once ignited, threatens to consume him alive. He is desperate to stop feeling too much too fast, and if the answers deafen the echoes of the screams, he might as well try.

Without even waiting for anyone else to try to talk him out of it, he snatches the syringe from Liz’s hand and uncaps it in one swift movement. Surrounded by the gasps coming from both Isobel and Liz, and a grunt that sounds menacing from Max, he rolls up his sleeves hastily, and injects himself in the arm.

The liquid burns as it enters his system, marking him for eternity.

 **i will get lost into your eyes**

He stands up, stumbling. He disregards every sound, just white noise in his head, and stomps out in the open desert where the first raindrops are starting to fall.

He staggers a few feet in the direction of the town – pointing like a beacon towards his trailer – before the rain starts to intensify. Having taken no more than ten or fifteen steps, he drops to his knees and balances himself on his hands as flashes of light shake through him, both around him and from his very core.

He regresses to a place he doesn’t really remember, all light and white, where a blonde woman is guarding them. He can feel himself running around in circles with kids who look scaringly like Max and Isobel when they were found in the driveway. He notices that the light and the white come from thunder and gunshots so loud they drill out everything else. The woman turns around, and he recognizes her from the moment they’ve shared at the prison.

 _Rath_ , she projects, and he bizarrely identifies the name as his own. _You have to be strong, my son. You have to remain by your friends’ side no matter what. Whatever happens to your father or to me, you have to protect Vilandra and Zan._

It’s strangely fitting that his role, even in a weird world, is to protect his siblings. Somehow he’s aware that, in this memory, they aren’t related by blood, but there’s a deeper link joining them, something neither of them can escape.

He sees other adults running towards them, advanced technology being shot their way as they signal for them to enter a spaceship he hasn’t seen until now. The console is made of beautiful multicolor glass, their writing engraved richly on it.

Vilandra is crying when another blonde woman with a demeanor so elegant he just knows she’s royalty is trying to talk her into entering her pod. Zan is already halfway inside, refusing to go without his twin sister. He frowns as he feels the adult woman’s words inside his head, _It’s your fate, to survive. You have to live._

And like that he knows. He knows they were born to be the leaders of the new world their race is looking for in other stars. He knows he’s the one born to protect them from harm and fear – to do whatever it takes to keep them safe. Feeling a bit self-conscious, he steps forward and gently takes Vilandra’s hand from her mother’s. _C’mon,_ he says within their minds. _Don’t be afraid. We’ll be together the whole time. I won’t leave you alone._

When the ship crashes and they wake up alone, he still has so many memories to drive him crazy trying to find a way back home with the map they all had memorized. Then they are separated and his memories start to fade. He becomes the shell of an alien inside a human body, forever trapped in a world he doesn’t belong to.

 **barely surviving has become my purpose**

Bile is rising up in his throat, threatening to choke him if he doesn’t tamper his emotions down. It should be easy, because he’s been piling up his feelings inside for the best part of his life on Earth. 

This is completely different. 

This is him wandering through a desert under an unforgiving sun with a burden on his shoulders so loaded that it sinks him into the sand. 

This is his heart being ripped from his chest in one swift moment at the sight of caged living beings he could have saved, once upon a time, but all he could do was ignite a fire no one could extinct. 

He falls to his knees a few feet away from his trailer, heaving, nails digging into the ground while his mind replays over and over the burst of flames, the ticking clock, the eyes on him, the feelings he will never be able to shake, forever engraved in his memories.

He wails. 

He mourns the loss of what he never thought he would have. He cries for the mother he has taken from himself in a futile attempt to learn about a past he now knows he doesn’t belong to. He shakes under the strength burning him down the same way he has burnt his family, his kind. 

He is a murderer. 

He will have to live with that. Or maybe he can hope for a meteorite to come crashing down on him and put an end to his misery. 

He can’t breathe. The air around him is too thick; he swallows shakily as he struggles to get a hold of himself before the lack of oxygen makes him pass out. Fear is gripping his insides, turning him into a heap of boneless shivers and defeated hopes.

Striving to get on his feet, he falters and falls face first on the mud left in the aftermath of the storm. He cannot muster up the strength nor the will to get up, so he remains still in there, soaked to his tired bones. 

He might as well be left there to die alone, just as he has lived his whole life on this damned planet – while he had a family to save, he chose not to seek them out, not to fight for them until it was too late. 

He isn’t the protector his mother believed he was. He deserves to be left out in the open to freeze. 

He doesn’t hear the car pulling up, the footsteps approaching. There is sound but he doesn’t want to acknowledge it – he wants to be left alone to die the painful death he has owned for himself. 

He doesn’t register gentle hands helping him get up, and if he feels fingers brushing his curls away from his damp forehead he decides it is just another hallucination. Later, he won’t remember how he was lifted and taken inside, but the memory of caress and safety will not leave him in a long time. 

**you will catch me if i fall**

He wakes to the light seeping through the blinders at the Airstream indicating that the sun’s already at its peak. The last thing he recalls is wandering aimlessly through the desert he knows so well, and all of a sudden he’s in his bunk at the trailer. He hears someone rummaging in the kitchenette. Frowning, he moves to sit up, but a wave of nausea pulls him down as quickly as he’s tried to stand.

“Easy there,” he hears, and he must be hallucinating because that’s Alex’s voice.

“What?” he manages to get out through the lump in his throat.

Alex comes back to the bunk, clothes rumpled as if he’s slept in them and a shy smile plastered on his face. “You don’t want to stand up to a room spinning around you. Take it easy now. Yesterday was exhausting and you need to rest.”

“I don’t want to rest, I want to know what happened,” he demands, only for a rush of memories to come to him in waves. He dry heaves at the intensity of everything he’s learned in the past twenty four hours.

“That’s what I was talking about,” Alex says matter of factly, taking a seat next to his spot. “Now, try breathing with me, or else you risk hyperventilating.”

For a while they just remain still, breathing in synch, until he feels confident enough to sit up. “What are you doing here, Alex?”

“I wanted to check on you after yesterday. When I came here you were having a panic attack, so I tried to help.”

He nods sharply, remembering the words Alex spoke for the first time, faced with the reality of almost losing him. He doesn’t want to get his hopes up, just in case.

“Also, I wanted to give you this,” Alex continues, reaching for his backpack. “Maybe it isn’t the best timing, but it feels right. You have to find your answers, and it’s unfair of me to keep this from you.” He unties the knot on the backpack and extracts a piece of glass so similar to the last one he has been looking for that he wants to cry. “Now you can go home,” Alex whispers, eyes wide and soul bare.

The piece glares at him from its spot between them, urging him to make a decision. But he can’t fool anyone. He can’t betray his heart. _I never look away_ is muting every other lie he’s ever told – the heartbreak and the loss. It’s his way of declaring a love so immense that the only way to describe it is _cosmic_.

There’s only one thing to do.

He reaches out over the glass with his mangled hand, forcing his fingers to intertwine with Alex’s through the surge of pain.

“I already found home,” he says.

Alex releases his breath.

They stare into each other’s eyes, wordless, hopelessly in love, until the sun sets and all they can see are the shadows cast on their faces.

**Author's Note:**

> Rath, Vilandra and Zan are the names of the clones of Michael, Isobel and Max in Antar in the OG Roswell. I just wanted a little homage of my own. I hope you all enjoyed it! Come say hi at [tumblr](https://lire-casander.tumblr.com)!


End file.
